He heard it again.
Soft crying. Not far away at all.
Fuck. It wasn’t a nightmare that woke him. It was reality.
He bolted out of bed and nabbed his boxer briefs from the pile of discarded clothes, slipping them on and going to the bathroom door.
He tilted his head and listened for a second, his hand hovering over the door knob.
Chelle was crying.
What the fuck.
He squeezed his eyes shut and simply breathed for a few seconds. After his fingers made contact with the metal doorknob, he still hesitated, trying to keep his heart in his chest. His stomach churned as he slowly turned the knob.
The bathroom was pitch black and he flipped the switch to see Chelle wearing his T-shirt, sitting on the linoleum floor in the corner against the tub, her face buried in her arms, which were crossed over her knees.
He quickly took the two steps to her and fell to his knees, putting one hand on her back. “Chelle.” His voice cracked on her name.
She sniffled but didn’t raise her head.
He cleared his throat and tried again. “Chelle,” he said louder, but still not more than a whisper. “What the fuck, Chelle?”
Hearing her cry was cracking his chest wide open.
“What’s the mad?” Fuck, fuck, fuck. He screwed that up. “Matter.” He wedged his hand under her chin to tip her face up.
Her eyes and nose were shiny and red, and tears flowed freely down her cheeks. She sniffled again.
“Are you hurt?” He didn’t see any blood or bruising or... fuck... anything. He couldn’t imagine this woman would cry over a stubbed toe. Curse, yes. Cry, no.
She nodded slightly.
“Where?”
She pressed a hand over her heart. “I hurt for you.”
His own heart seized, and his mind raced. What the fuck was she talking about?
“I don’t even know the details but my heart breaks for you.”
If she knew the details it would only be worse. So much fucking worse. Especially since she was a mother and would put herself in the place of his own mother that day at the mall. That day at the auction. The last day she ever saw her son before he was ripped away from her forever.
“Don’t need to cry for me,” he said slowly, trying to get the words right. He thumbed away a falling tear.
Julian had stopped crying for himself and the helplessness of his circumstances when he was five. It took him almost a year to figure out crying didn’t change a fucking thing. It was only a waste of energy and showed weakness.
“How can I not? I don’t know who did this to you and when. I’m picturing all kinds of scenarios in my head. And none of them... All of them...”
She sat up, cupped his face and looked right at him. Hell, right through him. Not like he was invisible, but like he wasn’t. She was trying to see inside him, right to his very soul. Her bottom lip trembled and a couple more tears spilled over from her beautiful brown eyes.
Every tear she shed was like a stab to his heart.
“At least tell me whoever did this to you went to jail, paid for what they did.”
None of them went to jail, or if they did, it wasn’t because of what they did to him. Whether they ended up behind bars after Julian was gone, he had no fucking clue.
“You’re not even going to tell me that?”
Hearing the raw pain in her voice was more torture than what any of his “daddies” and “uncles” had put him through. Julian had learned to block out the physical pain, but Shade couldn’t block Chelle’s genuine concern or the hurt she felt because of him keeping his past to himself.
“Don’t know the answer, Chelle.” It was sort of true, sort of not, since he hadn’t found everyone on his list yet. But the one who left the visible reminders, the scars that made her cry, was dead. That motherfucker had been first on his list. Shade was still working his way backward. All the way to that day in the mall parking lot. If he could find them all to give them what they deserved, he would. Every single fucking one of them.
Prison wasn’t good enough for monsters who ate little boys to satisfy their perverse hunger.
But he couldn’t share that with Chelle. Not now, not ever. Just like he’d never be able to tell her about what he did for the club up on Hillbilly Hill.
He had worried about how she would look at him after seeing his scars. The woman ended up crying over him with only his external ones. The ones she couldn’t see were so much worse. But if she knew about the rest... A decade of being a child sex slave or even with what he was doing with the Shirleys...